We'll start with an e-mail I recently received from Xena, a Baghdadi housewife with three children. Among other news, she writes
Winter arrived here over a month ago, and now it's really cold, hard to imagine after such hot weather. Life here is at its toughest. The lines for petrol are unbelievable and for us girls no hope at all [note: women used to receive preferential treatment in gas lines, but no longer].
We have electricity maybe one to two hours a day. The private generators for which we pay massive amounts are not working as we have no diesel fuel. Kerosene for heaters is 3,000 dinars [$2.05] for a three liter container (the usual cost is 300 dinars). But it's not available anyway. The cooking gas cylinders are now 7,000 dinars [$4.79], when at most they used to be 1,000 dinars.
It's doom and gloom for the next few months. The election is fast approaching and the incidents of insurgency are still happening very frequently. Lots of explosions and mortars, car bombs.
Thus the situation in Baghdad from one woman's perspective.
Still, given Xena's downbeat communication, it's downright amazing what we find in a recent report issued by the Baghdad group Women for Women. Entitled "Windows of Opportunity: the Pursuit of Gender Equality in Post-war Iraq" , the report, based on a survey of 1,000 women in seven Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, revealed that 90.6% of respondents viewed the future of Iraq with optimism. (So much for the terror campaigns of the fascist counter-liberation.) Other highlights included these findings:
84.3% of Iraqi women want the right to vote on the final constitution.
Nearly 80% believe in unlimited participation in local and national councils.
56.8% felt that women should have no restrictions on employment. Of the respondents who thought restrictions should exist, only 15% based their opinion on "custom or tradition," while the vast majority cited security concerns as reason to limit female participation in the workplace.
95.1% believe there should be no restrictions on women's education. Of those who thought there should be restrictions, 55% cited security concerns.
Some of the findings bear further exploration (or perhaps explanation); for example
16% felt that the government had done something to make their lives "much worse" in the past year, while only 5.5% thought the government had improved their lives. By the same token, 8.4% blamed "worsening conditions" on religious institutions, while 12.7% believed religious groups had made their lives better.
Then there were these statistics that showed the kind of privations Iraqis endure:
95% felt their families did not receive enough electricity.
63.5% claimed insufficient access to water.
39.5% believed they received insufficient food.
57.1% claimed inadequate health care.
49% complained of poor or inadequate housing.
Xena, I know, views her future prospects with a kind of grim optimism. (It's an Iraqi thing.) And when you consider that despite the difficulties these people endure--and no survey can quantify the degree of fear, uncertainty, anxiety, frustration, sorrow and rage they experience--over 90 percent believe their lives will improve, it is truly inspiring. A lesson in the unquenchable hope of human beings.
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